


Five Times Abbie and Jenny Witnessed Together and One Time They Didn't

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Biblical References, Other, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1058023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, there was Abbie and Jenny Mills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Abbie and Jenny Witnessed Together and One Time They Didn't

**Author's Note:**

> Though there is no sexual content in this fic, Abby and Jenny share a close and intimate sisterhood. I warn for incest because I do not want to assume how affected or how easily triggered my readers are, but just in case.

**1\. Cain and Abel**

Their foster parents tell Abbie: be more like your sister. She’s always so prompt in doing the dishes.

To Jenny, they say: Be more like your sister. She cleans her plate. Don’t you know there are kids — kids who aren’t you, who are starving, and who would wolf down their vegetables if given half a chance? Don’t you dare feed it to the dog, we can tell, we can always tell.

To Abbie: be more like your sister, who brings home As on her report card. Why can’t you do the same, aren’t you as smart as your sister?

To Jenny: be more like your sister, who never complains. Never talks too much. Be silent be silent be silent. Children are seen and not heard.

Jenny clears the dishes and washes them quickly while their foster parent watches Fox News. Abbie eats Jenny’s vegetables when they turn to yell at the dog for barking too loud. On the way home, Jenny goes over Abbie’s homework on the old park benches, weathered and split. They use a binder for a smooth surface. By now, they can copy each other’s letters perfectly. No one can tell.

So they look at each other across the dinner table, stepping gently on each other’s feet where no one can see. One push: I hate them. One push back: I know, I know. Two push: I hate them more. Two push back: nuh uh no you don’t.

It turns to muted wrestling under the table until their shoes are slipped off, their socks gone, and their toes tangled up together.

“I win,” they whisper breathlessly to each other as their foster parents blah-blah-blah at the tv.

**2\. Ruth and Naomi**

They come together in the woods, their hands clasped. “Don’t you ever wonder,” Jenny says. “Don’t you ever wonder if we’ll be—”

“Don’t,” Abbie says. “Don’t say it.”

Jenny says it anyway because she must be braver than Abbie, able to look this monster lingering forever over their shoulders, and tell it how it is. “Separated? Do you think they’d ever separate you and me?”

“They can try,” Abbie says, “but they’ll never.”

Jenny crawls closer to Abbie, dips her head so she can look at her face, her eyes, her mouth. “How do you know?”

“Because,” Abbie says, “because they can’t.”

“But if they do,” Jenny says.

Abbie clasps Jenny’s hand in hers, holds them tight to her chest. “Where you go, I go. Where you stay, I stay. I’ll never turn my back on you. We’ll be two of a kind, through thick and thin, no matter what, because we’re forever, you and me.”

“You promise?” Jenny says.

Abbie kisses Jenny’s forehead. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

**3\. Rahab**

They braid a red ribbon in their hair.

When Jenny is forced to read Huckleberry Finn for the umpteenth time in their umpteenth different school, she coils her ribboned hair around her finger tight tight tight, the red biting the blood from her skin to soak it up in itself.

Think of the things we’ll do, Abbie had whispered as her nimble fingers braided the ribbon into Jenny’s hair, we red riding hoods in the big big woods when the last bell rings. Not even the wolves will dare touch us with the red in our hair.

When school’s out, Jenny is the first to slide from her seat, books shoved into her backpack, and she rushes down the hall, pushing the cluster of students out of her way. The air, too heavy with hot, meaningless words blown up from carbon dioxide, brings her up panting, her face flushed, her heart racing. She pushes through the doors, and can breathe once more when she sees the flash of red ribbon in Abbie’s black hair as she lounges near the bicycle rack, waiting as she promised.

“Save me,” Jenny says, “save me from this hell hole of a school.”

“Only if you save me too,” Abbie says back, her nose wrinkling. “I have to read Shakespeare. Again.”

They go into the woods, lounge in the roots of the trees casting their dark shadows, and take turns reading Octavia Butler out loud to each other.

**4\. My Beloved**

They have other things hidden in the woods beside their half empty bottles of beer and their stashed books by the poets of Harlem. They have red tubes of lipstick. They have pink nail polish. They have perfume they spritz on the insides of their wrist and then wash away in the stream before they come home.

They take off their shoes, peel back their socks, and paint each other’s nails. They glide lipstick over their lips, one to the other, each sister’s hand shivering under the intensity of their care. They hold up a mirror and they pout at their reflection like the models do.

They snap polaroids of each other, flapping them like fans before keeping them safe in their books.

They stand together, Abbie on tiptoe because she’s always been shorter than Jenny. In the brown shells of their ears, they whisper, “You are beautiful. You are so beautiful.”

They laugh in each others arms because their lips are threads of scarlet, and their words are comely.

They caress their cheeks, then smudge the ghost of their lips away into rouge to grace the high rises of their cheekbones with their forever girl kisses.

**5\. A Prophet of the Lord**

Abbie sees the four white trees in the distance between her sister’s hand and how she refuses to hold Abbie’s. A shadow falls over them, and they both flinch away (from each other, not towards one another, and Abbie’s eyes sting), but it’s just a man.

A Detective Irving, someone new to the force, Abbie thinks vaguely, kneels in front of them — holding out two lollipops in clouded wrappers—one for each sister.

“I know it feels hard now,” he says as they take his gifts. They think he’ll go on, but he gestures at them to open their sweets first. They’re green and yellow but they taste of forgotten sour things. They must be a year stale.

Abbie licks the sugar from her teeth.

“But it won’t always be like this. You’ll see wonder and beauty again — not monsters in the shadows.” He chucks their chins. “You’ll see amazing things in the world—and you will be the cause of them.”

“Do you really think so?” Jenny says, candy forgotten, even though Abbie can tell by the set of her brows that she already believes.

“I know so.”

**6\. Judas Iscariot**

One sister sits in the dark as she waits for sleep to come to her.  _You should have stood by me._

Another sister also sits in the dark as she waits for sleep to come her.  _I thought it was you and me together._

_But you left me alone._

They turn on their sides, their fists pressed against their cheeks, against the red shadows of their shared kisses.


End file.
